Monthly Archives: June 2015

A critique of Amish theology and practice

28 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by in Theology

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This is the last of a series of three posts on the Amish. In this post, I will examine some of the theological problems with the Amish form of Christianity, while also recognizing commendable aspects of the Amish.

First, let me recognize that there is some variation among different groups of Amish, and what is said of some may not be true of others. But many ex-Amish will affirm unequivocally that the Amish are not genuine Christians. That is, they will say that the Amish are Christian in name and outward form only, and not in reality. Although I do not have personal experience in an Amish church, I assume this is because salvation in the Amish church is equated with baptism and church membership, with no teaching about the need to be converted at a specific point in time. Surely there is a point in time when every genuine Christian went from not having a relationship with God to having a relationship with God, from being lost to being saved, from not having the Holy Spirit to having the Holy Spirit, from not having his sins forgiven to having his sins forgiven, and so forth. In churches where there is no teaching regarding the need for a conversion experience, in fact most people in those churches have never had a conversion experience, i.e., a time in which they have prayed to ask God to save them, confessing their sins and their faith in Christ. But one cannot be saved by works, even if those works are baptism and church membership. If, as it seems, the Amish indeed do hold to a form of salvation by works, this would be their largest and most consequential error.

The requirement to take oaths in order to be baptized and join the Amish church is certainly unbiblical. The only biblical requirement for baptism is that one has been saved (by confessing one’s faith in Jesus as the crucified and risen Son of God, and asking God to forgive one’s sins through the blood of Jesus). Likewise, the only biblical requirement for joining a local church is to be saved and baptized. The Amish practice of swearing oaths to join the Amish community evidently originated in Jakob Ammann’s belief that the Amish were the only group of true Christians, and that therefore one could not be saved without accepting the Amish form of Christianity; however, this belief could only be correct if salvation were by works, and salvation is not by works (cf. Eph 2:8-9). Admittedly, there are numerous other Christian churches and denominations that maintain unbiblical requirements for baptism, and that require subscription to a church covenant in order to become a member of the church, but the oaths required by the Amish are particularly burdensome, and the Amish practice of shunning is severe.

The Amish belief in pacifism is certainly unbiblical. The pacifism of the Amish and Mennonites was a natural reaction to the savage persecution they endured at the hands of their “Christian” neighbors—whether those neighbors were Reformed, Lutheran, or Catholic. Those persecutions engendered a very passionate opposition among Anabaptists to any and all forms of physical violence. But Exodus 22:1, for example, affirms that it is no sin for someone to kill a man who breaks into his house at night. Warfare was frequently commanded by God during the Old Testament era, and in the New Testament the right of the state to wield the sword is affirmed in Romans 13:4 (cf. Luke 22:36).

An extreme aspect to the Amish pacifism is their opposition to proselytizing. This aspect of Amish theology is certainly unbiblical, given all the New Testament exhortations to preach the gospel, and all the New Testament examples of the apostles and their coworkers proselytizing unbelievers. One can see by this Amish practice the extent to which they follow tradition over Scripture. One also wonders how a Christian who truly cares about the lost people around him could refuse to share the gospel with them.

The Amish also seem not to care enough about the spiritual condition of their children. They take a “hands-off” approach to their children in their teenage years, not restraining them from participating in sinful activities. On the positive side, this ensures that their decision to join the church, if they do make that decision, is made of their own free will. But loving parents discipline their children, even as teenagers, and continually exhort and admonish them to do what is right.

The Amish insistence on a radical separation between church and state is another sour aftertaste from the persecutions they endured at the hands of state-sponsored churches. But there is nothing in the Bible which prohibits a government from adopting Christianity as its official religion, nor is there anything in the Bible which prohibits a Christian from participation in government.

The Amish opposition to higher education is probably necessary to preserve their identity. Education gives people the ability to think independently, which inevitably results in individuals contesting certain ideas held by the community. It is true that there have been many instances of young people departing from the teachings of Scripture after encountering anti-Christian ideas in academia, but it is also true that a church without education is a church which lacks depth and maturity. Christians have always promoted education as a means of understanding the Bible more fully and accurately, among other things.

On the positive side, the Amish could be compared to the Rechabites who are described in Jeremiah 35. The Rechabites were the descendants of Jonadab the son of Rechab, who was prominent at the beginning of Jehu’s reign, in 841 B.C. (2 Kgs 10:15-16). The events of Jeremiah 35 occurred about 240 years later. Jonadab had made his sons and their descendants swear to live as a separated people according to strict rules: they could not drink alcoholic beverages, they could not own property or valuable possessions, and they had to maintain a nomadic lifestyle. More than 200 years after Jonadab’s death, his descendants were still living according to the rules that he had set for them (Jer 35:6-10). Rather than ridicule the Rechabites as “legalists” or “weirdos” for making and keeping these peculiar vows, the prophet Jeremiah commended them, and blessed them in the name of the Lord. While the situation of the Amish is not identical to that of the Rechabites, the idea of living as a separated people who follow unique rules is not necessarily bad or unbiblical.

Certainly one must respect the courage and determination of a people who refuse so steadfastly to conform to the dictums of modern society and culture. Their rejection of modernity entails enduring considerable ridicule, and also enduring the hard work of performing all their labor by hand, without modern conveniences. It is true that there is a dark side to modern technology, and the Amish have avoided this dark side by refusing to accept technology. There is a sense in which one feels more authentically human on a quiet farm surrounded by crops and animals than in the artificial world of a modern city, full of streets and skyscrapers. Also, in a world filled with violence one finds something refreshing in the peaceableness of the Amish, even if their extreme of pacifism is not right. The Amish are a group of people who have clearly defined beliefs and strong values, which they practice with remarkable consistency.

The roots of the Amish

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Church history

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In my last post, I described some of the beliefs and practices of the Amish. In this post, I will review and critique the theological roots of the Amish. In my next post, I will provide a further critical evaluation of Amish theology and practice.

Although a visitor to Amish country today might view the Amish as very far removed from mainstream Protestant evangelical Christianity, in fact the spiritual ancestors of both the Amish and modern Baptists were part of the same group, the Anabaptists, in the early days of the Protestant Reformation (beginning in 1525). The Anabaptists were savagely persecuted, not only by the Roman Catholic Church, but also by the Reformed Church and the Lutheran Church, because they taught that baptism should only be performed on persons who have expressed faith in the gospel message, and therefore not on infants. Various groups of Anabaptists subsequently developed, and the ancestors of the Amish were part of the group known as the Mennonites (after Menno Simons, who died ca. 1559).

Beginning in 1693, and culminating in 1700, the Mennonite wing of the Anabaptist movement experienced a split over the issue of church discipline (Ordnung).[1] The majority party, led by Pastor Hans Reist, continued to identify themselves as Mennonites, while the minority party, led by Pastor Jakob Ammann (Reist’s former student), became known as the Amish. First Corinthians 5:11 was one of the disputed texts: I am writing unto you not to associate with anyone who is named a brother, if he is a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such a one no, not to eat. In some ways, Ammann’s exegesis was much superior to Reist’s, though the way he applied the text to his contemporary situation was faulty. Ammann and his supporters were correct to insist, from the Bible, that when church discipline is applied, those under discipline must be shunned. Reist and his supporters were wrong to maintain that Matthew 9:10-13 and 15:11 apply to the issue of church discipline, and that Christians should have normal social interaction with people who have been excommunicated from the assembly. Ammann, however, appears to have condemned his former teacher Reist far too hastily and sharply, insisting that he be placed under church discipline for holding an incorrect view of church discipline. Reist, for his part, refused to acknowledge the error of his exegesis, even after seven years of dispute and a last-ditch effort by Ammann and his followers to reconcile. But both men and their followers were wrong on the critical issue of identifying those to whom church discipline should be applied. The group in question that was placed under church discipline by both parties was fellow Anabaptists who allowed their babies to be sprinkled (“baptized”), and who attended Reformed church services, in accordance with Swiss law, reasoning that the baby-sprinklings were nothing but harmless washings. While I agree with Ammann and Reist that these Anabaptists were compromisers, it is an issue on which good men could plausibly disagree. Ammann certainly went way too far when he labeled the compromising Anabaptists as idolaters (because they were in communion with Reformers who supposedly worshipped a false Jesus), and to demand the application of church discipline to them for this reason. Reist and Ammann appear never to have disputed the question of whether church discipline should be applied in the case at hand. Ammann was also wrong to apply church discipline to Reist, labeling him as an apostate and a heretic, and his followers as false brethren, because of his wrong view of church discipline. The issues at stake, with regard to both Reist and the Anabaptist compromisers, were disagreements over practice, not heresy or a serious, ongoing lifestyle of immorality of the type described in 1 Corinthians 5:11. In fact, all Christians have at least a few errors in things they believe and practice; if church discipline was to be applied for any error, we would all be under church discipline! The legacy of Ammann’s hotheaded application of Scripture was twofold: on the one hand, his followers have indeed remained a separate group until the present day, and have maintained their old ways and traditions; on the other hand, the Amish have continued a practice of church discipline which is far too strict, shunning anyone who leaves their church for any reason, including a legitimate change of conviction on doctrines that may reasonably be disputed. Reist’s view that Christians should not shun false brethren also left a legacy in the Mennonite church, which has cooperated with the World Council of Churches and other ecumenical movements, much to its detriment.

[1] For a good outline of this history, see: Kirk R. MacGregor, “Inerrancy, Church Discipline, and the Mennonite-Amish Split” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 60/3 (2017): 581-93. Available here.

The ways of the Amish

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Yesterday I visited Shipshewana, Indiana with a friend. The Shipshewana area is home to the third largest Amish community in the United States, and it is probably the best-developed Amish community for “English” (non-Amish) tourists. There are also many people from related Christian groups, such as the Mennonites, in the area. Shipshewana is one of my favorite places to go for a day trip.

The Amish are a sect of the Christian church which originated in the Anabaptist wing of the Protestant Reformation—the same wing that produced modern Baptist denominations. The Amish take their name from Pastor Jakob Ammann, whose dispute with his former teacher Hans Reist created a split among the German-speaking Mennonite community of the Emmental region of Switzerland (around Bern). The original split occurred in 1693, and was finalized in 1700 after a last-ditch reconciliation proposed by Ammann and his followers was rejected. The majority party, led by Reist, continued to identify themselves as Mennonites (after Menno Simons), while the minority party became known as the Amish (after Ammann). The issue disputed by the two groups was the practice of church discipline, and Ammann’s group held a very strict position on that issue. Ever since the group originally began, the Amish have been a distinct and separated people. The Amish are allowed to interact with outsiders, but anyone who has taken the oaths required to be baptized in one of their churches, and subsequently has left the Amish church or has been expelled from it, is completely “shunned.” The Amish are not permitted to have anything to do with someone who has left their church, even if this means having no social interaction with one’s own children. The Amish also dress and live in a way that shows they are distinct from those around them.

The Amish are famous for their “old-fashioned” ways. Amish homes are easy to spot as one is driving through the countryside, because there are no electrical lines running to their homes, and clothes are always hanging on clotheslines outside to dry. Traditionally the Amish did not have plumbing, either, although many now do. They do not drive cars; instead, they ride bicycles or horses and buggies. The two rules for the dress of Amish women are plainness and modesty. Amish men once sported full beards, but when beards became popular during the Victorian period in nineteenth century America, Amish men began shaving their moustaches in order to look different from those around them. The Amish are deeply suspicious of education, and do not attend college. Most Amish keep farms at home, though not all are full-time farmers. They still plow their fields with horses, rather than tractors, and they reap their harvests by hand. Some Amish make high-quality solid wood furniture for a living, some work as blacksmiths for their community, and some work in retail sales. When a new member joins an Amish community, the community will hold a “house raising,” in which they build the new member a house in a single day, and sometimes also a “barn raising,” in which they build a new barn in a single day.

Amish church practices are distinct. The Amish have no church buildings, instead holding meetings in private homes or barns on a rotating basis. Benches and other furniture needed for church services are carried on wagons to the location of the meeting. The Amish, like the very first Anabaptists, still practice a mode of baptism called affusion, which consists of pouring water out of a pitcher onto the head of the person being baptized (the candidate); some other Anabaptist-related groups began to practice immersion after becoming convinced that the Bible teaches immersion as the true mode of baptism, while the Reformed and Lutheran wings of Protestantism simply continued the Roman Catholic practice of sprinkling a few drops of water on the head of the one being baptized. Amish church meetings are conducted in High German. At home, the Amish speak Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a dialect of German with some English influence. The Amish learn English in school and from their non-Amish (“English”) neighbors. When one visits Amish country, one is taking a step back in time to the days of the Protestant Reformation. One is seeing Anabaptists, much as they were more than three hundred years ago.

The Amish, like many other early Anabaptists, are pacifists, meaning that they are opposed to all warfare and violence to other human beings for any reason, generally including self-defense and litigation (with the exception of “shunning,” as noted above). The Amish do not spank or scold young children, they let their teenagers “sow their wild oats,” and they are even opposed to proselytizing. They have, nevertheless, been violently persecuted throughout their history, and their communities have been forced to migrate many times. Today, most of the Amish live in the United States, especially in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states of the northern Midwest. The last surviving European Amishman died in the 1930s.

The Amish are being forced to make more and more compromises with the modern world, but they still hold on to their traditional ways as much as possible. Some Amish, for example, will use a computer and a cell phone for work, but they will not have electricity or a telephone at home.

The Amish are opposed to wealth, and you will not see any Amish mansions. On the other hand, the Amish are intelligent, frugal, hardworking people who never take or need government financial assistance. If someone in the community needs help, the other members of the community will provide the necessary assistance.

The tourist crowd in Shipshewana is different from the crowd at most places where people gather, since Shipshewana does not have a bar, a casino, a movie theater, a sports stadium, or other such things. Shipshewana is a place for people who enjoy quiet, clean, meaningful activities. It is also a place for those who want to step back in time, to get away from the busyness and hubbub of modern society. Most shops close around supper time, since that is when the Amish ride their buggies home for the evening. Most people and businesses in the area are openly Christian, and are friendly to conservative evangelical Christians. One of my favorite places to visit in Shipshewana is called Menno-Hof, which is like a museum where the Amish and Mennonite communities have told their history in their own words. I also like to visit E & S Sales, the local cash-only discount grocery store where many of the Amish and Mennonite neighbors work and shop.

Of course, Shipshewana is not a nice place to visit for people who are ex-Amish, even if they are part of a Mennonite or a Baptist church. Ex-Amish will be recognized and shunned by the community. In my next post, I will examine some of the theological problems with the Amish form of Christianity, while also recognizing commendable aspects of the Amish.

Biblical acrostics

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Bible

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An acrostic is a composition in which the initial letters of each line or unit, when taken together, spell something meaningful. An alphabetic acrostic starts with the first letter of the alphabet, and each successive line begins with each successive letter, until the alphabet is finished. The Bible contains a number of alphabetic acrostics.

Acrostics only occur in the Hebrew sections of the Bible, not in Greek or Aramaic, since almost all biblical poetry is in Hebrew. There are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, so every alphabetic acrostic will have twenty-two parts. (No distinction is made between the letters śîn and šîn in the acrostics, both of which were written as ש.)

Biblical acrostics were made for poetic beauty and ease of memorization. In Bible times, manuscripts were scarce because they had to be copied by hand; a memory device such as an acrostic was welcomed. The alphabetic acrostic also gave the poet a definite structure within which to organize his thoughts. Of course, the full beauty of an acrostic is lost in any translation, but it is still useful to note this structure, and to look at it in Hebrew if possible.

The most challenging thing about composing an alphabetic acrostic is finding appropriate words for letters which occur infrequently. Just imagine—if Psalm 119 were written in English, there would have to be eight verses beginning with X, and eight with Z. In Hebrew, wāw and ṭêṯ are about as uncommon at the beginning of a word as our X and Z, respectively. The most difficult letter of a Hebrew acrostic by far is wāw. There are only eleven biblical Hebrew words that begin with wāw, and ten of these are very rare words or names, several of which may be textual errors. Fortunately for acrostic-makers, the eleventh word is the most common word in the whole Bible, the conjunction ו (and, that, but). In every acrostic in the Bible, all the wāw verses begin with the conjunction ו, including eight verses in a row in Psalm 119. Psalms 25 and 34 both skip this difficult letter.

The most famous acrostic in the Bible is Psalm 119. This Psalm is termed a repeating stanzaic acrostic because it is arranged in twenty-two stanzas, each of which has eight lines that begin with a single letter of the Hebrew alphabet. These twenty-two stanzas are usually marked in English Bibles by the letters that the lines in each stanza begin with. Like some other acrostic psalms, it is the acrostic which gives structure to Psalm 119, which otherwise follows a theme rather than an outline. As the Psalmist composed this acrostic, I imagine he might have thought, “What observation on my walk with God can I express in a sentence that begins with this letter?” “How can I pick up on the thought of the previous verse with another word of this letter?” For the most part, there is considerable variation in the initial words for each acrostic letter. This not only adds to the poetic beauty of the acrostic, but also creates a nice mixture of thought, ensuring that a variety of spiritual truths are expressed.

Another famous acrostic in the Bible is Proverbs 31:10-31, the description of the virtuous wife. While this is a well-known passage, most people are not aware that its twenty-two verses begin with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

One of the most interesting acrostics in the Bible is the book of Lamentations, which is composed entirely in acrostic form. In both ch. 1 and ch. 2, there are twenty-two strophes of three lines each; the initial letters of the strophes together form the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In ch. 3, there are again twenty-two three-line strophes which stand for the twenty-two letters, but this time each line of each strophe begins with the same letter (a repeating stanzaic acrostic). In ch. 4, the pattern shifts to twenty-two two-line strophes, where again only the first line of each strophe begins with the letter in the acrostic. Chapter 5 has twenty-two lines, but no formal acrostic—perhaps to symbolize the chaos and disorder in Jerusalem. It is interesting that in chs. 2–4, pe precedes ‘ayin, a known variation of the more usual alphabetic order.

Psalms 9 and 10 together form an unusual broken acrostic, in which almost every other line begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet, but with some irregularities. Psalm 10 skips out of the acrostic in vv. 3-11 (the description of the wicked man) before rejoining it for the final four letters. Still, enough of the letters are present to consider the acrostic as legitimate, and not a mere coincidence or scholarly contrivance. These two Psalms are closely linked; they were probably composed together, with the tenth Psalm written to complement the ninth.

Psalms 111 and 112 are unique in that each colon, or subdivision of a line, begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Even though these Psalms are only ten verses each in our English Bibles, they contain twenty-two cola each, plus a heading.

Psalms 25 and 34 are also acrostic in form, with each line beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet; however, the letter wāw is skipped in both of these psalms. Although some ancient versions and modern scholars try to insert a wāw line in Psalm 25, an analysis of these psalms shows that the wāw line was intentionally skipped to form a double acrostic. Skipping the wāw creates an odd number of letters in the alphabet (twenty-one), which puts lāmeḏ exactly in the middle. Psalms 25 and 34 both add a pe line after tāw (at the end), to keep the number of lines at twenty-two. When this additional pe is taken together with the first and middle letters of the acrostic (’ālep̄ and lāmeḏ), the letters spell ’ālep̄, the first letter of the alphabet. Most likely, wāw was the letter chosen to be omitted because there is only one word beginning with wāw that could be used in an acrostic. Attempts to “correct” the “omission” of the wāw line actually ruin the poetic structure of these psalms. Psalm 25 also has the peculiar trait of having two rêš lines (rather than qôp̄ – rêš). Many reasons for this have been suggested, but it is possibly because David felt that there was no appropriate way to form a qôp̄ line.

Another acrostic psalm is Psalm 37, in which every other line begins with a consecutive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The acrostic in this psalm is unusual in that a particle precedes the word beginning with the acrostic letter in the lines for the ‘ayin and tāw.

The only other complete acrostic in the Bible is Psalm 145, in which each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. There is no nûn verse in the Masoretic Text of this psalm (nûn is skipped between v. 13 and v. 14), but this is in keeping with the variation in form that is found in the other biblical acrostics.